


Bouquet

by Eatgreass



Series: The slow descent [2]
Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen, i dissect ophelias mad scene, i need to put all my ophelia fics in one place man, its so good, she gets her freedom and she gets to think and shes very smart!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: She was sick and fucking tired of the secrets, of the power plays, of the filth seeping in through the corners of the damned castle.
Relationships: Claudius/Gertrude (Hamlet), Laertes & Ophelia
Series: The slow descent [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899646
Kudos: 7





	Bouquet

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, if you don't know what Elizabethan flower meanings are, I left them in the notes at the bottom.  
> You can read this without those notes but I thought it would be helpful to leave the meanings to make it an easier read.

Ophelia wanted to expose the whole damn court, even if that brought her down in the process.

She was sick and fucking tired of the secrets, of the power plays, of the filth seeping in through the corners of the damned castle. 

So she did what a small, meek, fucked up girl whose father had just died could do. She went outside and she picked herself a bouquet. Stems of rosemary, pansies by the dozens, rue, fennel and columbines, she picked daisies, and she picked a withered and browning stem of violet. By the end of it, her dress was stained and covered in mud, and her hair was let loose and matted. She didn’t care, for she was going to get a small amount of catharsis, even if the price was so high that it killed her. 

She walked in singing. 

A folk song, about righteousness, and pilgrims, and what a girl  _ should  _ be, what this girl was  _ not.  _ She made up her own lines as she got bolder, singing about a girl cuckolded, and sent to bed without supper of either kind. She sang of loss and of love and of death and of what a person never could have. She sang of pain and of corruptness, and of damned arrogance that moldered and festered in a castle, growing like a disease, even as the only woman in her life she could trust looked at her with pity and with sorrow and with all the emotions Gertrude didn’t  _ deserve  _ to have laying on her face. 

Claudius entered. Laertes entered. All of them, staring at the poor mad girl with pity in their face, with regret for what they had done to her. Damn right they had done things to her, but that didn’t mean they were to blame for her actions. She had made her own decisions, taken left turn after left turn until she arrived at the place she earned for herself. They didn’t  _ get  _ to blame themselves for who she was. They didn’t  _ get  _ to use her as a tool to foster their own sadness. She wasn’t a player, she was a person, and before she let herself fall, she would follow the law of Moses. Do unto them as they had done unto her. 

“There’s rosemary for remembrance,” she said. “Pray, love, remember.” She handed the rosemary to Gertrude, and watched as the queen took it with a stunned look on her face. Good. She hadn’t remembered her husband, or her son, or anybody that she was indebted to. Maybe the rotting flowers would serve as a token of remembrance. 

Ophelia wasn’t done. She was going to tell everybody what kinds of corrupt bastards they had been, and she was going to watch them wither and die, as the violets had. 

“There’s pansies,” she said, addressing Laertes, “For thoughts.” He took the flowers, a look of sadness for his lost sister on his face. He never was bright enough to understand her words. Only Hamlet could, and he was long since dead to her, a bloody sword and shirt that she didn’t want to see again. He could never understand that he needed to watch his words, his actions, his thoughts, and let himself not be ruled by mad anger. 

She turned to Claudius. “There’s fennel for you.” He didn’t look at her pityingly. He looked like he wanted to commit another murder, and so she smiled at him with all her teeth, and her rosy cheeks shining. Now everybody in the room knew he was a dirty whore, and maybe, just maybe, they would be free to talk about it. Maybe something would come out of this, and maybe he could accept that his actions were fucked up. Or at the very least, her brother would see the king for what he was. Adultery, flattery, arrogance, murder. That’s what the fennel meant, and he  _ knew  _ it.

“There’s columbines.” She held onto her dignity. 

She pierced Claudius with a stare, and he backed up. Good. “There’s rue for you,” she said, “and here’s some for me. We may call it herb-grace on Sundays.” He didn’t take the plant, so she forced it on him, shoving it behind his ear. If he wasn’t going to accept his own cruelty, she would humiliate him more than he thought possible. He would rue the day he killed his brother, and in turn let her father die. But as she tucked the rue of hers in the folds of her dress, she knew that only Claudius was thinking about his own rue. Very well. She would die tomorrow, and if they wanted to think about the implications of the rue next to her breast, that was their bias. Perhaps it just showed how focused the court was on their beds. She addressed the court. “You must wear yours with a difference.” There. Now they knew she belonged in a nunnery. Now they knew it was intentional, but if they wanted to set their minds on that, their own stubbornness to see what they wanted would be their downfall. So fuck it, she had more rose thorns to stick in them before she was done.

“There’s a daisy.” She threw it on the floor, and ground it beneath her bare heel. There was no purity left in the Danish court. 

She turned to Gertrude once more, and watched as the queen flinched. Now everybody knew what she was capable of, and how much she would tell of them. “I would give you some violets,” she said sardonically, “But they withered all when my father died. They say he made a good end.” She dropped her withered violets on the floor. He didn’t make a good end, he made a fucking shitty end, and he was rotting in the worst pits of hell. She would join him in the morning. Gertrude had watched, benign and queenlike as always, as her father was slaughtered by the prince. She deserved the stinking flowers, reeking of violence and impurity. Stewing in a mess of corruption, Gertrude was. Not only that, but Gertrude had presumed to comfort Ophelia. But what was comfort when the one bearing it was the worst of all?

Her flowers were gone, and she dumped the stems on the chair Hamlet would have been in. The murderer, the friend, the cruel man that told her to go to hell. All he deserved was the weeds. She was out of flowers, and the court sighed in unison, thinking that the barrage of truth was over. 

She sang. She sang of her father, and of christian grace, and of damnable hell. She sang until all she got were looks of pity and addresses of lady. She sang until her voice was hoarse and squeaking, and she was escorted out of the hall and to her quarters. She sang until she died, and that was all the rebellion she got. 

**Author's Note:**

> rosemary, remembrance.  
> pansies, thoughts.  
> fennel for adultery and flattery.  
> columbines is for purity and dignity.  
> Rue, there is the obvious meaning, (rue the day and such), but it was also used as an herb to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  
> Daisy is for innocence.  
> Violets meant modesty, faithfulness, christian values. It was representative of the virgin mary.  
> Also to note, stew is a word for brothel, and the address of lady would be one used for somebody less muddied in this case.  
> Cleanliness was important at this time, and so coming into the court unkempt, and then being addressed as "Pretty lady" would have a bite all of its own. Not to mention pretty was often a demeaning word at that time, much like how we use "cute" now.  
> Also not important for the reading of this, but there was a much higher penalty for swearing at that time, it was regarded as a worse sin. This is why in this fic, Ophelia swears only in her mind, not out loud.  
> Thanks for sticking with me and my nerdiness about language lol!


End file.
